in the new AARP bulletin,
that Dr. Mohammad Shahbazi, M.D., chair of Behavioral and
Environmental Health at Jackson State U., took two Mississippi health
professionals to his native Iran. They saw first hand Iran’s primary
health care system that has “eliminated health disparities between
rural and urban populations over the last 30 years, reducing infant
mortality in rural areas by tenfold.”

The Iranian model hires villagers known as behvarzes as “the first line
of defense” in local “health houses”: centers for primary care. Men
take charge of environmental health problems –sanitation and water
testing — and women “concentrate on child and maternal health, family
planning, vaccinations and tracking each family’s births, deaths and
medical histories.”

The Mississippi physicians are now applying for funding to set up ten
such centers in rural Mississippi, Arkansas, and Louisiana. “The health
house system in Iran is like the German VW Beetle,” says James Miller,
a health consultant from Oxford, MS. “It’s simple and it works. It was
developed by a country that wasn’t too popular at the time,” but it
solved a fundamental social problem.

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Iran's 'Health Houses': A Medical Model for the U.S. - Daily Yonder

Iran’s ‘Health Houses’: A Medical Model for the U.S.

Physicians in the Mississippi
Delta, where rates of hypertension, diabetes, -- and poverty – have
long been among the highest in the nation, are looking to Iran for a
new health care model.

Joel K. Bourne, Jr., writes in the new AARP bulletin,
that Dr. Mohammad Shahbazi, M.D., chair of Behavioral and
Environmental Health at Jackson State U., took two Mississippi health
professionals to his native Iran. They saw first hand Iran’s primary
health care system that has “eliminated health disparities between
rural and urban populations over the last 30 years, reducing infant
mortality in rural areas by tenfold.”

The Iranian model hires villagers known as behvarzes as “the first line
of defense” in local “health houses”: centers for primary care. Men
take charge of environmental health problems –sanitation and water
testing -- and women “concentrate on child and maternal health, family
planning, vaccinations and tracking each family’s births, deaths and
medical histories.”

The Mississippi physicians are now applying for funding to set up ten
such centers in rural Mississippi, Arkansas, and Louisiana. “The health
house system in Iran is like the German VW Beetle,” says James Miller,
a health consultant from Oxford, MS. “It’s simple and it works. It was
developed by a country that wasn’t too popular at the time,” but it
solved a fundamental social problem.

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Physicians in the Mississippi Delta, where rates of hypertension, diabetes, — and poverty – have long been among the highest in the nation, are looking to Iran for a new health care model.

Joel K. Bourne, Jr., writes in the new AARP bulletin, that Dr. Mohammad Shahbazi, M.D., chair of Behavioral and Environmental Health at Jackson State U., took two Mississippi health professionals to his native Iran. They saw first hand Iran’s primary health care system that has “eliminated health disparities between rural and urban populations over the last 30 years, reducing infant mortality in rural areas by tenfold.”

The Iranian model hires villagers known as behvarzes as “the first line of defense” in local “health houses”: centers for primary care. Men take charge of environmental health problems –sanitation and water testing — and women “concentrate on child and maternal health, family planning, vaccinations and tracking each family’s births, deaths and medical histories.”

The Mississippi physicians are now applying for funding to set up ten such centers in rural Mississippi, Arkansas, and Louisiana. “The health house system in Iran is like the German VW Beetle,” says James Miller, a health consultant from Oxford, MS. “It’s simple and it works. It was developed by a country that wasn’t too popular at the time,” but it solved a fundamental social problem.